LOVED THIS- a story from the WASHINGTON POST

I will be writing a full update on the children, our family and everything I PROMISE before our "Family Day" which is December 24th...

In the meantime this was forwarded to me and just took me back to the hours at Embassy as I watched so many new families waiting for their names to be called.

Enjoy, if you have adopted grab a tissue...this is sweet!!!

washingtonpost.com
Parent-Child Bond Knows No Borders

By Donna Scaramastra Gorman
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, October 3, 2005; C09

I was three months pregnant when I was hired by the U.S. Embassy in
Moscow to process visas for newly adopted babies.

The job itself was fairly simple. I pulled a fat file off the top of
the stack and looked through it to make sure everything was in
order. I checked for birth certificates, medical records, legal
papers -- everything to assure that the child was truly adoptable,
that he'd either been legally abandoned or freely given up by his
birth mother.

I looked over the original Russian documents, comparing them to the
English translations, searching for anything out of the ordinary
that I might need to point out to the adoptive parents. When I'd
looked through the whole file, I called the parents to my window,
had them sign the paperwork, stamped a few documents and
said, "Congratulations, your baby's visa will be ready this
afternoon."

There I was, belly expanding by the day, reading documents about
people who couldn't get pregnant or chose not to. I was eagerly
awaiting the birth of my first child, monitoring every bite I put in
my mouth to ensure the baby would be healthy, wondering if it was a
boy or a girl, imagining the moment when I'd finally hold that tiny
squalling child in my arms.

But the files showed a darker side of pregnancy. Every baby came
with either a note from the birth mother, giving up her rights to
the child, or a note from the police officer who had found the
abandoned baby. I found it hard to read these letters. Some of the
birth mothers wrote about their reasons for giving up their
children, while others simply scrawled "I do not want this baby" and
signed their names.

I couldn't bear to read the official reports about babies left in
outdoor marketplaces or on street corners in the dead of winter.
Still, I plowed through each file, absorbing details about these
children who hadn't been wanted until now. I wondered about their
birth mothers and tried to imagine how they felt when those unwanted
babies kicked inside their bellies.

After work each day, I'd head home and curl up on my couch to read
my baby books. And I thought about all of those babies in my office,
whose lives had started out so differently. The hastily scrawled
notes in the files: "The girl was found in the vegetable
market." "Shortly after giving birth, the mother left the hospital
without giving her name." The mothers' notes haunted me as I raided
the refrigerator at night. I wondered how those women felt as they
wrote them.

I read articles in the pregnancy magazines about bonding with your
baby. They all recommended holding the child right after it was
born, before the umbilical cord was cut. It seemed to make sense.
But what of these families that came to my window each day? If the
books were right, how could you bond with a child who'd lived for
months, or even years, without laying eyes on you? I watched these
parents, looking for signs of doubt, of awkwardness. But every day
children passed by my window as part of a new family, and those
parents held those children with confidence and care. They may have
met their children only days ago, but no matter. They'd bonded.
Babies slept, drooling down their mothers' backs. Toddlers nuzzled
into their parents' necks while being held, the parents casually
shifting them from one hip to the other as they signed the papers I
passed under the window. Older children stood behind their new
parents, peeking out shyly. Already they'd become a family, and I
wondered -- when did it happen?

How did these people know that the child they'd received was the one
destined for them? How did the children know they'd finally found
home?

Many of the parents adopted older children. In most of these cases,
the child spoke no English and the parents spoke no Russian. By the
time they arrived at my window, they were already communicating in a
mixture of sign language and simple words. These children clung to
their new parents, fearful, perhaps, of losing them in the crowd,
but also grateful for the safe haven, hungry for their first
embraces. One man propped his new 6-year-old daughter on the counter
as he signed the paperwork. Between papers, he looked at her and
offered some explanation, in English, of what he'd just signed. She
stared at him blankly.

"Congratulations," I said when we were through. "Do you have any
questions?" He looked at her and back at me. "Yes," he replied. "How
do you say 'You're my daughter' in Russian?" When I told him, he
turned to her, repeating, "Ty moya dochka." She looked up at him and
slowly, slowly her face lit up as a smile spread across her face.

"Ty moya dochka," he said again, pointing at her earnestly. I sat on
the other side of my window, invisible now, while father and
daughter threw their arms around each other and my own baby kicked
inside me.